Politicians have found climate change (a.k.a. global warming) to be a sexy subject. It’s much easier to talk about doing something to stop climate change than to talk about the environment generally. Richard Black of the BBC puts it like this:
“Species are going extinct at perhaps 1,000 times the normal rate, as key habitats such as forests, wetlands and coral reefs are plundered for human infrastructure.
Aquifers are being drained and fisheries exploited at unsustainable speed. Soils are becoming saline, air quality is a huge cause of illness and premature death; the human population is bigger than our one Earth can currently sustain.
So why, you might ask, are the world’s political leaders not lamenting this big picture as loudly and as often as the climate component of it?”
These are not the result of warming, they are just the result of human exploitation.
Why is no-one decrying the burning of forests in the Madagascar, Borneo and other underdeveloped locations? Not only do we lose a CO2 sink (which may not matter) but the environment is damaged, species go extinct and the ecology is unbalanced so new deserts form etc.
Why is no-one concerned that we will run out of energy sources, hydro-carbon sources (for plastics etc), fresh water, lithium and other metals? Or should I say, there are people worried but it does not include politicians or people making all the noise.
Why is there no world conference on the scale of the Copenhagen Climate conference that is concerned with these more important problems? One short answer (from politicians) is that it’s a more difficult thing to tackle so let’s ignore it or better still sidetrack everyone with Climate Change.